Disquiet
by michael1812
Summary: After Zhaan's death, everyone's on edge. A day in the life of Joolushko Tunai Fenta Hovalis, troubled by insomnia and alienation. Alone in the Uncharted Territories, without choice at the wrong place and the wrong time.


As a child she had always been terrified of spiders crawling underneath her blanket and monsters lurking in corners she couldn't see, and now there were DRD's buzzing throughout Moya's insides. Working within the very walls. Reminding her of all the nightmares she'd forgotten.

Jool couldn't sleep. Sick of staring at the ceiling she turned on Moya's internal bio-luminescence and sat dazed at the edge of her bed, unable to think of anything but her past. The gold hurt her eyes.

She had even asked Pilot to keep the DRD's away from her quarters for a while, despite a mayor system just outside her room that desperately needed fixing, and he relented, trying to make her as much at home as possible.

_Home. _

"If I knew were home was or even which direction we should look," she remembered Crichton saying wearily. She, like him, would come to know those words by heart.

Nervously Jool had stood in the doorway of Command, unable to stop herself from constantly looking over her shoulder and wrapping her arms around her to keep herself warm. She asked Pilot to raise the temperature a little, but _oh_ she had been naive to think anyone would listen to her. They never did before.

"Cheer up, princess," Crichton said, feeling bad about leaving her alone in Command. His yawn was fake. She knew all he was going to do was see Aeryn, anyway. Despite their agreement not to pursue their relationship they seemed to be drawn to each other regardless, whether consciously or subconsciously.

"Why do you all keep calling me that?" she snapped. "I'm no princess, hardly. My father was a bureaucrat. It's that Chiana. She put you up to this. She won't leave me alone."

"She's just teasing."

"She hates me. Please don't go. I don't want to feel alone up here. Please..."

He pointed at his yawning face while he walked away, clearly not in the direction of his quarters. Jool could only see this as proof they all hated her.

Why? Why was all this happening to her? She wasn't a bad person. She wasn't a _good_ person, but she wasn't a bad one either.

For a moment there she actually thought she was having an adventure until every single one of them left her alone with her thoughts. She couldn't stop herself from thinking. It was driving her mad.

She knew why the others were treating her like they did. It was etched in their faces. Their friend died. Zhaan. Her death had left an irrepairable hole in the dynamic of the crew.

They kept to themselves now, constantly on edge, and even Crichton was less talkative than usual, preferring to wander the corridors in search of something to get his hands on. Aeryn wasn't talking, Chiana was mostly avoiding and D'Argo only talked about one thing. Even Rygel had slipped into a morose state of melancholy. He ate less than usual.

Jool found him staring down his food in the mess hall in the middle of the night. Or was it the afternoon? She looked out of the window and saw nothing but the dark of outer space. She never liked long space travel. It's the reason why she chose to stay with her father.

Her mother was a diplomat. She always travelled from system to system, embassy to embassy. Her father didn't think it was healthy. He insisted she needed some grounding. Stability. And she was five when she agreed.

The breaking of the awkward silence came at a relief for Jool, as long as it kept her from hearing herself think. But it wasn't the voice she expected to hear.

"Are you really going to eat all that?" she asked the Hynerian, when she passed him by to unload her tray of eaten goods into the garbage disposal unit. Rygel had three full plates left in front of him and all he did was smile.

When Jool looked back Chiana was sitting in her seat.

"Morning..." she said and Jool decided to sit down elsewhere. Chiana followed her with her eyes. D'Argo grumbled in the corner, sulking, while Rygel gorged himself, filling the void until it hurt. 

"What's the matter, princess?" Chiana asked. "You're looking rather red around the eyes."

Jool scoffed. Chiana wasn't looking particularly good herself, with her sunken eyes and shaking hands.

Jool had actually put a lot of effort into looking presentable, unlike her.

When Pilot informed her breakfast was being served she dragged herself out of bed just for the sole fact of pretending to be normal. Maybe that would make it okay. Maybe someone would talk to her today, but it wasn't the person she was hoping.

Jool could tell D'Argo was paying attention underneath all the sulking and eating. He had also reached his second helping of something Crichton had lovingly dubbed '_alien guacamole'_ but she had no idea what it really was. She thought it best not to ask.

She hoped she hadn't been too neurotic about cleaning all the crumbs. She had been really hungry and there were little supplies left. Especially whenever the Dominar would choose to make an appearance. She found him disgusting.

Jool finally sat down and Chiana glanced from person to person as if she was trying to gauge their reactions, feeling for the right moment to speak up. When she saw the company she was in she settled and let it rest. She rose from her seat to grab something to eat like everything else, so she could chew like everyone else, and reluctantly maintain the brooding silence.

"Are you really gonna eat all that?" Chiana scoffed when she passed Rygel by. Orange goo was dripping down the corner of his mouth and down his neck.

"I don't see anyone else! Do you?"

Chiana took one of his plates on principle, even though it had already gone cold. Rygel tried to take it back (and bite her) but she was quickly out of reach. Jool pretended not to have heard or seen that, but Chiana caught her gaze regardless.

"What are you looking at?"

"You're despicable." she said Jool, because she just couldn't take it anymore. "All of you."

She marched out of the room, helpless like a child throwing a tantrum, but it was all she had. It took her a few corridors to realize she was now alone again. Stomping the floor with her foot made her feel better, if only slightly.

She couldn't wait to leave the ship and get some fresh air. Some room between her and everyone else. Turns out D'Argo had taken the last helping and the ship was now void of actual food. Jool couldn't stand the thought of living on crackers, so she volunteered to go down to the next Commerce Planet they happened upon, and she wasn't alone.  
>They figured they could all use a break from the confines of Moya, so the Transport Pod was crowded upon landing. Yet none of them said a word.<p>

The breaking of the awkward silence came at a relief for Jool, as long as it kept her from hearing herself think. She hopped after John and Aeryn when the gap between them widened.

"Where are we going?" Jool asked. This was the third market vendor they walked past without even a glance at his merchandise and the third street of this sad end of the universe they were aimlessly wandering.

She hated being at their mercy. If she got lost or if they decided to ditch her here she would be helpless and defenceless against the brutish natives. She still couldn't get used to the sight of their red clay skin and piercing green eyes. She barely got used to the talking slug.

"We're just gonna get some supplies, princess. You can tag along if you want to." Crichton said.

Jool mouthed the word 'princess' with scorn, before almost tripping over a loose stone.

Aeryn simply ignored her, preferring to keep constant vigilance. The two Peacekeepers seemed to mirror each other's pose with one hand to the hip. Aeryn held a hand on to her precious pistol underneath that black leather longcoat while John was keeping a close eye on the currency in his jacket pocket.

It was what was left of Zhaan's share and they had all promised to spend it wisely.

Then the fourth vendor praised the quality of his starcharts and Jool couldn't believe it when they walked right past him yet again.

"They're fakes," Aeryn explained.

"Listen, Jool..." John tried, but Jool had reached breaking point again. She couldn't help it. She was putting her foot down again.

"Joolushko Tunai Fenta Hovalis!" she instantly corrected him (she still didn't understand why these beings had such a hard time saying her whole name) and John backed off.

She was sick of aimless wandering, whether it be on this planet or in space.

"What?" she added, misunderstanding their silence.

"I think it's time you headed back to the Transport Pod," Aeryn said.

A pause and Jool found herself stuck in another nightmare, albeit one she predicted to the letter. Given no choice she returned to the Transport Pod only to change course halfway down the hill.

She reckoned that if she returned to the Pod now it would've meant this day was over, ended; it meant she had given up and all she had to look forward to was more days stuck staring at the ceiling in the dark. She had to go back.

She struggled uphill back toward the city. The ground had turned cold now the sun had already set, except Jool could still see patches of light blue within the canopy of clouds. It was actually rather beautiful.

Then she screamed at the sight of the slimy snails that crawled across the gravelly path. They preferred the hot air coming from the geysers surrounding the settlement. Jool preferred something a little bit more stable than a city built upon volcanic activity. The redskinned believed there was a monster sleeping underneath the ground; the fumes was his breath and the deep rumbling was when he snored.

Jool could've done with some sleep right about now. Instead she headed to where she figured Chiana and D'Argo had headed, but similarly before she had even reached the city centre the Luxan already met her halfway, pushing Chiana and Stark out in front of him like two squabbling children. All the while the smug Hynerian was laughing at their mysery.

Jool was baffled, but no-one would explain. She assumed Chiana had been up to no good as usual, and in a way she was, but it was Stark who had lashed out at her when she defiled the native temple, defiled his inner peace while he was praying for Zhaan.

Inside the Pod he sat alone, telling everyone about his bad dream, while D'Argo grumbled and yelled at Chiana for ruining everything yet again (but it didn't stop her from yelling back). Jool wished she had been there to see it. Yet at the same time she was glad she was anywhere but there. She dreamed of being even farther away, farther and farther, all the way back home, instead of being absorbed in all their bullshit.

But since the thirty years that passed everything must've changed. Thirty years. People could've lived and died in thirty years. All those that were born, all those that died, all those that grew old...all without her. Because she was here. Now.

Oh, how she hated them.

That night, dinner was burnt and Pilot still hadn't fixed the system in the adjacent room. Now a pipe had blown and all she could hear was some loud gushing of air as if something poisonous was being vented into the spaces between walls. It sounded like the geysers she encountered on the commerce planet.

She was washing her clothes in Moya's amnexus fluids when the announcement came:

"Everyone, prepare for Starburst!"

"No!" Jool yelled back. She scrambled to remove her clothing from the fluids which would soon be affected by Starburst. She was warned this could happen and now she was standing here dressed in borrowed rags hoping that the few clothes, the only real possession she had left, wouldn't be ruined because of this badly timed nightly endeavour.

She was only here because she couldn't sleep. Heavy and sensitive, she'd just lay there, hypnotized by the dark, tossing in her non-sleep feeling for the right position. Her shoulders and back hurt, like a constant crunch running down her spine, like pieces of a puzzle that were out of place. She had tried flipping over and she had even tried sleeping on the floor. Sleeping just didn't work, while yawning was starting to hurt her jaws.

She dug herself underneath those covers. Any touch of the cold outside them reminded her of the icy container that brought her here and all the time she lost inside it.

There were no alarm clocks on this ship. No sensation of time passing in outer space. Just the dark. Now there was this constant nagging feeling in the back of her head telling her there was something she was supposed to be doing, but she never knew what. There was nothing to do anymore, except maintenance. Food and sleep and talk...

After the second hour she preferred to be productive instead of reflective. She wished her thoughts would just stop.

She held on for dear life climbing out of the amnexus fluid carrying her laundry, stumbled and fell on what had now turned into a conveniently placed cushion. Her laundry broke her fall.

Her joints were heavy, but not as heavy as the pounding behind her eyelids. A headache that just wouldn't go away. She finally broke into tears and she dug her face into her clothing.

"Why? Why won't anything on this ship frelling work?"

When she looked up she was startled by the glint of bronze gazing at her from the shadows. Almost like a wild animal, Jool didn't dare spook him. It was Stark, she knew it was Stark. He tried to kill her once, or at least that's what she assumed he was gonna do. Now she didn't want to know what was behind that mask. Ever.

"Go away," Jool said to the baffled Banik's shadow. She quickly gathered her things and ran away.

'That wasn't fair,' she told herself when she returned to her vibrating quarters.

He was mourning. He lost Zhaan. They all did. Oh, now she was feeling guilty again, but she didn't dare go back.

Her clothes were fine, thankfully, and so she put on her best leather and marched off to Pilot's den to complain about the noise that kept her from sleeping yet again. Turns out she wasn't alone and the others had formed a united front against Pilot's bad handling of Moya's internal maintenance.

Jool walked in on one half of the conversation.

"Pilot, we barely had time to get off the planet! Why such a hurry?" Crichton asked.

"Moya's under a lot of stress, commander."

The big blue controller of the ship had scales and a head bigger than anything she had ever seen before. His replies were always brief, almost as if he was hiding something.

"There's no trouble with the Peacekeepers, is there?" Chiana asked.

"None that I know of. But there have been some transmissions of suspicious activity in the cloud belt we've just entered."

"What do you mean _suspicious_?" D'Argo asked.

"I'd say we're going the wrong way," Rygel spoke. "Whose bad idea was it to enter this damned cloud?"

"Moya's," Pilot replied. "She believes the cloud's properties will help soothe her. According to my scans we are perfectly undetectable from any sensors. We are safe here."

"But what if there's already people in there? Scans wouldn't detect them, right? Right?" Chiana said.

"Moya is willing to take the risk," Pilot said. "If it will help her sleep."

John rubbed his brow. "I think we've all had trouble sleeping lately."

"She's worried about Talyn," Pilot explained quietly. "And she misses Zhaan."

"We all do, Pilot." Aeryn said.

Jool sympathized. Jool understood. She felt their loss linger in the air, like an unspoken promise that bound them all to this ship. A family that had lost its mother. And where was she in all this?

Chiana and Rygel still complained to Pilot about the unfinished work that troubled them around the ship and Jool felt it was about time she chimed in.

"I want a new room," she told Pilot, and his multi-tasking mind made mention of her request.

He was the only one that ever welcomed her and that ever treated her like a guest. Like she was wanted.

"Joolushko," he said. "You can have any personal quarters you like. If your current situation does not suit you..."

"I'd like a new one. Please," she added.

"You are free to choose."

Chiana couldn't believe it. "_She_ gets a new room? What about us? We never got to choose!"

Jool smirked at her before leaving, enjoying this tiny victory. It wouldn't last long, but she didn't care. Finally things were looking up. All she had to do was ask. She was off to change locations, and pack the little she had, hoping that she could finally catch some sleep in a different room.

And if that didn't work, she'd move to another. And another.

Then she jumped. Stark was in her room. She immediately thought of ways of how to get rid of him, like vermin, and hated herself for it. She tried to act tough.

"You...get out of here...this is my room!"

"I fixed it!" Stark cried. "Look! _Look!_ I fixed it!"

Now that he'd mentioned it, she did notice the sound was gone. And the heat.

Stark invited her to place her palm against the bulkhead.

"Leak's gone now," he said. "Feel it."

Jool put her hand on the wall. It was warm.

"How did you do it?" she asked, instead of asking_ why_.

"I had help," Stark admitted and a DRD chirped atop Jool's nightstand. "See?"

Jool remembered running away from him, remembered the loss he had to endure...

"I'm so sorry..." she told him and he looked away. The spirit of his once curious eye had been dampened by memory.

"Oh," he said. "I'm all right. I saw you fall. You smelled like Moya."

Jool remembered the amnexus fluid she had waded in.

"Yes," she smiled. "Yes I did."

"Zhaan used to smell like Moya sometimes," Stark said.

You loved Zhaan, didn't you?" Jool said.

"And she loved me."

His eye turned to the ceiling and back again to the floor, as if somehow he was hearing Jool's voice inside his head. Then he looked at her.

"Are you all right?" he asked and she wiped away her tears.

"I'm fine."

"But you're not, though. I'm not."

"Because you lost her," Jool noted. She'd heard stories, been through her apothecary and seen her friends change in her absence. Hell, even the ship mourned her.

"Zhaan. Was she nice?"

"The nicest," he said.

"I wish I could've known her better."

"Maybe..." he said. "One day..."

Jool removed her hand from the wall.

"I think I'm feeling better now," Stark said and half smiled before leaving the chamber.

Finally, she had made a friend. A scary friend, and a bit insane, but a friend nonetheless. More than she had before. She never did thank him.

The bed didn't feel so bad now, not anymore. She laid her thoughts and fears to rest upon the pillow and it was morning before she realized she had slipped into sleep.

Stark's words echoed through Jool's mind. If he could do it, so could she. That's when she realized she did feel better. She could do this.

She never did change rooms.


End file.
